


Stick Figure

by tikistitch



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, The Darkness - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 09:14:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4342766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tikistitch/pseuds/tikistitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's dreams are haunted by the Darkness, and Dean races to find the cure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stick Figure

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this while I was waiting in the Hall H line at SDCC. Hope you like it.

Sammy shivered, wiped sweat from his forehead and pulled the threadbare covers up under his chin. These motel rooms were never warm enough. Dean said he would get back with some cough syrup, but that had been a while ago, before it started getting dark outside. Sam bit his lip, hoping Dean hadn't gotten in trouble, like that one time. He'd seen the cash Daddy had left them: Sammy wasn't very old, but he could count, and there wasn't a whole lot left. Dean was probably gonna do that thing where he put stuff in his pocket and left without paying. He shrugged it off, but it made people mad sometimes. And sometimes they had to run pretty fast.

Or Dean would drive the car. He really wasn't supposed to drive the car. His legs didn't quite reach the pedals, and it was funny. Funny and scary, but mostly funny. Dean was a good big brother, and he took care of stuff when Daddy went away.

Daddy went away a lot. 

_Creak._

The hushed sound echoed across the room. Sammy blinked. This room was a little weird: they had a closet. Usually, motel rooms didn't have closets. That was a thing you had in a normal room, in a normal home. But this place seemed like it wasn't a regular motel: it was like it had been somebody's actual room once. On one wall there was an old, heavy shelf with some dumb, dusty ceramic things. They didn't usually put such stuff in a motel, because people stole them. Dean had told him that. But none of the stuff was worth anything, so it wasn't even worth stealing. Just dumb stuff dumb people filled their normal homes with. Because they were dumb.

And there was this closet: Sammy had noticed it right off, since it was so weird. And by weird, he meant normal. 

But now he was noticing it more. It was two dark wood, sliding doors. The wood was a little warped, and they seemed to sag, as if they were sad. 

This didn't really bother Sammy.

What bothered Sammy was that one of the doors hadn't been pulled quite shut. There was a gap – a shadow. Even in the dimness of the room, it was dark. But it wasn't a good kind of darkness: it was the bad kind. 

Sammy pulled the bedclothes tighter. He wished Dean would get back.

_Creak._

There was a soft sound, as if the building were settling, or the wind was lightly pushing on a window.

But it was not the building settling.

And it was not the wind.

Sammy curled up on himself, squeezing into a tight little ball, every inch of him focused on the gap, the little gap in the closet door. 

_Creak._

Sweat broke on Sam's fevered brow. He blinked, cheeks hot, heart rattling around like a bird that wanted to escape his chest. 

_Creak._

The Darkness – it was coming.

_Creak._

The closet door shuddered.

_Creak._

The gap edged wider. 

_Creak._

The Dark...

 

“Dean!”

Sam blinked awake. His brother's face, lined with concern, poised above him. 

Dean's hand was squeezing his brother's shoulder. “You OK, Sammy?” he whispered.

Sam shuddered and threw off the covers that tangled around him, looking around. His room. His room in the bunker. But he was sprawled on the floor, swaddled up in blankets for some reason.

Oh!

“You fell right outta bed,” Dean was explaining, voice low and soothing. “Just like when you were a kid.” Dean's hands were on him, strong and gentle, ushering him back into his bed. There was a chair beside the bed, with a blanket and a book and a cup of coffee. 

Dean had been sitting with him, watching over him. 

“I'm all right.” Really, it was the only thing a Winchester man could say. “I'm all right, Dean.”

“Yeah, I know. I know. You wanna try-?”

“No!” Sam stood, shaky, eyes red-rimmed. “No,” he said, more quietly. “I'm- I'm gonna get some coffee.”

“Sammy, how many days has it been? Since you slept?”

“I don't know. I don't know.” Sam extricated himself from the remaining covers and shambled off down the hall, towards the kitchen. He knew how many days, how many hours, maybe even how many minutes. He knew. O how he knew.

He spent some time fumbling around with the coffee pot, emptying out a soiled filter, pouring water with trembling hands. It was no surprise when he finally turned and Dean was there, sitting quietly, watching and waiting. 

“Dean, get to bed! At least one of us should sleep.” 

“Gonna take both of us to fight the Darkness,” Dean muttered, scratching at the reddish stubble under his chin. Sam sat himself down across from his pigheaded brother, spilling coffee on his hand, cursing.

Dean cocked an eyebrow and slid something across the table. Sam found his eyes couldn't focus. Another useless book of lore? “What?” It was just a blank pad and a pencil.

“I was thinking,” said Dean. “We've been over your dream, right?”

“It's always the same,” Sam rambled. “Always the same. I'm a kid, we're in some creepy motel, Dad took off somewhere, you've gone to the drug store, and there's the closet. It's always the same. I've told you!”

“No, but I know how your brain works. You have that photographic memory, right?” Dean tapped the pad with a finger. “Then try and draw what you see.”

Sam gaped at his brother. “I can't draw worth a fuck Dean. You know that.”

“For me, Sammy.” Dean picked up the pencil and waggled it, giving his charming, panty-melter of a smile. 

Sam wanted to poke him in the eye with the fucking pencil, but instead grabbed it. He grimaced and drew furiously. And then he slid the pad back to Dean. “See. There I am.” 

It was a stick figure, in a stick bed. Dean snorted with laughter. And then he slid the pad back. “OK. Rest of the room. Go on.”

“Fuck. You.”

Dean was unruffled. “Sure thing. Now draw.” 

Dean wasn't gonna give up, and Sam was too fucking tired to fight. So he grabbed the pencil back and, gripping it tightly, started to sketch out the room. No, fuck that! He flipped it over to a new page and tried to make a little better job. There was stick figure Sammy on the bed. The stupid bedspread. The creaky closet. 

“Where's the door to the room?” Dean asked.

Sam grumbled but scrawled in the door. There was a dumb room divider with weird shapes in front of it. And then on the other side the old shelving unit with dusty crap on it.

“What is that?” asked Dean, who was now standing behind him, looking over his shoulder and generally being annoying.

“I told you I can't draw!” Sam whined. “It's knick-knacks.”

“In a motel room?”

“Yes, knick-knacks in a motel room!”

Dean picked up the paper and stared. “What knick-knacks?”

Sam grabbed the pad and began to sketch. “Stuff like this. It must be a joke.” He drew a body and little cartoon wings.

And Dean snatched it out of his hands. “Holy fuck.”

“What?”

Dean was staring at the lousy sketch like it was the holy writ. “I don't wanna get your hopes up, but I had an idea. It's a stupid idea, but it's an idea.”

Sam held his breath.

 

The closet door creaked.

It was an old thing. Older than time. 

And now – now it was free. 

The sweet smell of freedom. Intoxicating.

So near. Just a molecule away. 

The closet door creaked. It moved, a bare millimeter, just enough to approach, just enough to ooze into this tender creature's thoughts. Edging into the strange cube that was stuck in a channel of the creature's memories. Six sides. Floor-ceiling-walls. And a bed with a tiny creature trembling in fear....

But where was he?

The room was empty. No frightened young one. 

The Darkness swept into the room, probing the bed, swirling around, frustrated. Where was its prize? So many nights of the waiting. Where was its prize?

“Hello.”

Orient to sound. The voice came not from the bed, but beside, atop a structure wrought from dead trees, dusty in the child's pained memories.

The Darkness hurled itself towards the sound, towards the small, pale, smooth thing. “We seek Sam Winchester. He is for us. He is ours.”

“Sam isn't here.”

“Give us the boy! He is ours!”

The small, smooth thing tilted its small, smooth head. “I've told you. He isn't here.”

“What are you?”

It stood on smooth legs, and unfurled smooth appendages from an area of the back. What was this thing? “I am an angel of the Lord.” The voice was not smooth. It came from somewhere old.

But no as old as the Darkness.

“You will bring us to the boy, Angelofthelord!” And so it was commanded.

The smooth, pale had something shiny in its smooth, pale hands. 

“What is the shiny?” the Darkness wondered.

“Your death.”

“We want it! We want Sam Winchester.” The darkness swirled around the small, smooth thing. It permeated the room, swirling and unfurling. It was ancient and eternal. “We will smother. We will crush. We are the Darkness.”

The smooth one was quiet. “As a friend of mine likes to say, bite me.”

The Darkness surged. It would crush. It would extinguish. It was real and terrible and old, and it hungered.

But the little smooth one on was not little. Nor smooth. It was very big. It was bigger than size. It contained infinities. 

And all of it – all of it was on fire. 

Hotter than flames, stormier than suns, the burning of the universe.

There was a scream. Something screamed. Dark met bright.

And there was light.

 

Castiel stifled a burp. A bit of dark smoke wafted from his throat, and he studied it.

“Darkness,” he whispered.

He glanced down at Dean Winchester, asleep on the couch, snoring in a most contented manner, his mouth open, a small rivulet of drool at the corner. Humans never seemed so peaceful as in sleep. It was calming just to watch. Castiel much enjoyed watching people, his Father's glorious creations.

“Cas!”

Even cracked and rasping, Castiel recognized the warm voice of Sam Winchester. He smiled up at the red-eyed boy as he came shambling in to the room. “Cas!”

“Hello, Sam.” He gestured with a lowered hand to keep their voices down – Dean was still asleep.

“You got it, Cas! You did it,” Sam croaked, his voice rough.

“I believe so.” Cas frowned. This was surprising. He had been walking in Dean's dream, not Sam's. “Did you sense it?”

“Yeah.” Sam put a large hand through his hair. “I'm not sure how, but I knew. I could feel it. Was it the Enochian spell? Was that what did it?”

“I simply showed it my True Form. It can be … daunting to some.”

Sam's face broke into a tired smile. And then Cas found himself engulfed in a tight embrace. “Thanks, buddy,” Sam told him. Cas reminded himself to hug back. “Thanks!”

“What's goin' on?” croaked Dean, who had just woken up. “We get it? Or are you guys making out?”

“We got it, Dean!” Sam told him, untangling himself from the angel. “Cas got it!”

“It worked?”

“Apparently,” said Cas.

“Go, us,” said Dean, giving his brother high five. 

Sam blinked and yawned and smiled and stretched, as if he needed to do everything right now. “Hey, I'm gonna.... I'm gonna go sleep for a week. If you guys don't mind?” 

Dean smiled at his kid brother. “Yeah, you go. We'll figure it out later.”

Sam nodded gratefully. He gave Cas's shoulder another squeeze. “Thanks, dude. I really owe you.”

“Oh, and not me for figuring it the fuck out?” Dean blustered. But he was beaming. The way humans do.

 

Sam tossed. And then he turned.

This was dumb. He could finally sleep, and now he couldn't sleep! Just too keyed up and excited.

He flopped back on the pillow. He felt good – no, better than good. It was like a fever had broken. Something that had been eating at his soul was now banished.

The Darkness had seen Cas's True Form. It must be quite a sight! 

There was Darkness, and God said, let there be light.

Let there be Seraphim, the burning ones.

Sam held his breath.

That was it! That was why God had created the burning ones. Seraphim, the angels of fire. That was the solution! Dark versus light. They needed Heaven's help on this one. Light versus dark, dark versus light.

He was already halfway to the kitchen before he realized he was even out of bed. He'd figured it out! He needed to tell Dean and Cas. He'd figured it out!

And then he halted.

Dean and Cas. 

They were face to face in the kitchen. Dean had just extended a hand, placing it, so very gently, on Cas's face. And then, as Sam watched in wonder, Dean crowded in towards Cas, bringing his forehead so it just touched that of the angel. They stood together, eyes closed, peaceful. Rapt.

Sam did an about face, and then he was walking back to his bedroom. Tomorrow. 

It could all wait for tomorrow. 

Right now, he needed sleep. And sweet dreams.

Dreams of angel fire.


End file.
